Inker

The inker (also sometimes credited as the finisher, or the embellisher)^[1] is one of the two line artists in a traditional comic book or graphic novel. After the penciler gives a drawing (or copy of the drawing) to the inker, the inker uses black ink (usually India ink) to produce refined outlines over the pencil lines. The ink may be applied with a pen or a brush — many inkers use both — or even digitally, a process gaining in popularity. The inker is usually responsible for every black line on the page, except for letters, which are handled by a letterer. In comic strips, as well as Japanese manga, a single artist takes responsibility for penciling, inking and lettering, either doing it all (e.g., Charles M. Schulz) or hiring assistants. For comics printed in color, there is usually a separate colorist.

Although Inking was originally a contrivance created solely to save time and money (instituted in the late 1930s during the Golden Age of comic books), it is now a recognized art form in itself. As the last hand in the production chain, the inker has the final word on the look of the page, and can help control a story's mood, pace, and readability. Like a film editor, a good inker can salvage shaky pencils — while a bad one can obliterate great draftsmanship and/or muddy good storytelling.

All the same, inking is often seen as more technical and less glamorous than penciling, and many inkers go unrecognized. This perception was parodied in the Kevin Smith movie Chasing Amy, where Banky Edwards is accused of merely "tracing" the images drawn by penciler Holden McNeil.^[2]

Workflow

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While inking does involve tracing pencil lines in a literal sense, it also requires interpreting the pencils, giving proper weight to the lines, correcting mistakes, and making other creative choices. The look of a penciler's final art can vary enormously depending on the inker. A pencil drawing can have an infinite number of shades of grey, depending on the hardness of the graphite and the pressure applied by the artist. By contrast, an ink line generally can be only solid black. Accordingly, the inker has to translate pencil shading into patterns of ink, as for example by using closely spaced parallel lines, feathering, or cross-hatching.

Some inkers will often do more than simply interpreting the pencil markings into pen and brush strokes; depending on how much detail the penciler puts into the pencil drawings, the inker might add shading or be responsible for the placement of black spaces and shadows in the final drawing. An experienced inker paired with a novice penciler might be responsible for correcting anatomical or other mistakes, modifying facial expressions, or changing or improving the artwork in a variety of other ways. Alternatively, an inker may do the basic layout of the page, give the work to another artist to do more detailed pencil work, and then ink the page himself (as Joe Simon often did when inking Jack Kirby,^[3] or when Michael T. Gilbert collaborated with penciller P. Craig Russell on the Elric of Melniboné series).

The division between penciller and inker described here is most frequently found where the penciler and inker are hired independently of each other by the publisher. Where an artist instead hires his own assistants, the roles are less structured; an artist might, for example, ink all the faces of the characters while leaving the assistant to ink in the backgrounds, or work with the inker in a more collaborative fashion. Neal Adams' Crusty Bunkers worked like this, with say one inker responsible for the characters' heads, another doing bodies, and a third embellishing backgrounds.^[4] The inking duo Akin & Garvey had a similar arrangement, with one inking the figures and the other the backgrounds.

Digital inking

It is possible to digitally ink using computers, a practice that is becoming more common as inkers learn to use powerful drawing and editing tools, such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Inkscape, Corel Painter, and Manga Studio. A graphics tablet is the most common tool used to accurately ink digitally, and if it is done in a vector-based program, pixelization due to changes in resolution are no longer an issue. However, the process is considered by many to be more time-consuming.

History

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For a long time, inking was an under-appreciated part of the comics industry, only marginally above lettering in the pecking order. In the early days of comic books, many publishers hired "packagers" to produce entire books. Although some "star" creators' names (such as Simon and Kirby or Bob Kane) usually appeared at the beginning of each story, the publisher generally didn't care which artists worked on the book. Packagers quickly instituted an assembly line style method of creating books, using top talents like Kirby to create the look and pace of the story and then handing off the inking, lettering, and coloring to largely anonymous — and low-paid — creators to finish it.

Only the highest-paid creators could afford to ink their own work, and some artists resisted compartmentalizing their work in this way. Joe Kubert and Jim Aparo would usually pencil, ink and letter, considering the placing of balloons as an integral part of the page, and artists such as Bill Everett, Steve Ditko, Kurt Schaffenberger, and Nick Cardy almost always inked their own work (and sometimes the work of other pencilers as well). Most artists, however — even expert inkers of their own work like Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, Will Eisner, and Alex Toth — all had to accept other hands tampering with the finished product. And most saw the benefits of saved time and the added income the process afforded. After all, if an artist had only to pencil or "lay out" a page, he could theoretically produce twice as many pages of artwork per month.

Sadly, due to the absence of credits on most Golden Age comic books, many inkers of that period are largely forgotten. Those who are remembered have difficult to compile résumés. Inkers like Chic Stone, George Papp, and Marvin Stein embellished thousands of pages during that era, most of which are still unidentified.

The advent of the Marvel era in the early 1960s finally gave the inker proper credit. It soon became obvious that the inking was the second-most important visual element of a comic book, and finishers like Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott, Mike Esposito, John Severin, Syd Shores, and Tom Palmer began to get their due. By the mid-1960s, pairing a skilled inker with the appropriate artist became an editor's primary function, and when the team clicked, the synthesis of these talents elevated the parts beyond what they could achieved individually. Notable penciler-inker teams like Kirby and Joe Sinnott, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, John Buscema and Palmer, and John Byrne and Terry Austin (particularly on The Uncanny X-Men) proved that comics could truly became a collaborative art.

Notable inkers

Notable penciler-inker partnerships

• Jack Kirby/Joe Simon — possibly the first true tandem, in their heydey they defined Captain America, The Red Skull, Sandman and Sandy, Manhunter, the Boy Commandos, romance comics, and much more.^[3]
• Jack Kirby/Dick Ayers — Ayers probably being Kirby's most prolific partner, the pair produced hundreds of pages of western and monster stories before the Marvel superhero era began.^[5]
• Curt Swan/George Klein — Worked for decades on DC's Superman titles. One observer wrote "[I]t was Swan with Klein who created the definitive Superman image [that] typified the Silver Age".^[6]
• Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott — the early days of the Fantastic Four
• Ross Andru/Mike Esposito — the pair worked together on-and-off for over forty years, for DC and Marvel, on such titles as Showcase, the Metal Men, and Amazing Spider-Man
• Dick Ayers/John Severin — Sgt. Fury
• Gene Colan/Syd Shores — 1960s Daredevil
• John Buscema/Tom Palmer — 1960s Avengers
• Neal Adams/Tom Palmer — late 1960s X-Men and Avengers
• Neal Adams/Dick Giordano — late 1960s/early 1970s era Batman, Detective Comics, and Green Lantern/Green Arrow
• Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson — Notably on the early 1970s Superman titles, the team is often referred to as "Swanderson."^[7]
• Gene Colan/Tom Palmer — Tomb of Dracula
• John Byrne/Terry Austin — a celebrated run on the Uncanny X-Men
• Frank Miller/Klaus Janson — Daredevil and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
• George Pérez/Romeo Tanghal — the New Teen Titans
• Stephen R. Bissette/John Totleben — Alan Moore's Swamp Thing
• Jim Lee/Scott Williams — Uncanny X-Men, WildCATS, and All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder
• Joe Quesada/Jimmy Palmiotti — many projects, notably Ash and Daredevil
• Ed McGuinness/Dexter Vines — known as "eDex,"^[8] they've partnered on (among others) Civil War, Superman/Batman, and JLA Classified
• Bryan Hitch/Paul Neary — Known for their celebrated run on "The Ultimates", written by Mark Millar.

See also

• Script (comics)
• Penciller
• Letterer
• Colorist

References

External links

• Atlas Comics (retailer). "The 20 Greatest Inkers of American Comics Books"
• Brevoort, Tom. "What an Inker does", Marvel.com (June 19, 2007)